The Location Pin I Check at 2 A.M. My daughter turned twenty-two this spring and moved three states away for a job I am proud of her for taking, and somewhere in the packing and the goodbye hugs I installed an app on my phone that lets me see a small blue dot moving across a map whenever she drives somewhere at night. I told myself it was for safety, and some of that was true. But if I am honest, most nights I do not check that dot because I am worried about a specific danger. I check it because checking it is the only thing that makes the not knowing feel bearable for a few seconds, and then it stops working and I check again. I have spent most of my life believing control was something I could win if I just paid close enough attention. I ran my whole world that way for years, tracking everything and everyone except the one thing that was actually spinning out of control, which was me. I lost the right to know where my daughter was for a long stretch of her childhood because I w...

The Settlement Check I Never Cashed RedeemedExistence daily devotional, September 17, 2026 There is an envelope in the bottom drawer of my desk that has been there for almost two years. Inside it is a check from a man I used to call my business partner, the final payment from a legal settlement after he walked off with money that belonged to both of us and left me to explain the shortfall to people who trusted me. The lawyer said it was a fair number. My wife said it was time to move on. I have never deposited it. Some part of me decided that cashing it would mean the account was closed, and I was not ready to close an account I still wanted him to keep paying into, one way or another, for the rest of his life. I did not call it bitterness for a long time. I called it justice, the same way I called plenty of things by softer names back when I was drinking. But justice does not check the balance on a debt every few weeks the way I checked that envelope, running my thumb along th...

# The Renovation Photos Two Doors Down My neighbor two houses down gutted her kitchen this summer, and she has been posting the progress in our little street group chat the whole way through, the demolition, the new cabinets going in, the marble counters catching the afternoon light in every photo like she hired someone just to angle the sun correctly. I am happy for her. I want to be clear about that, because what I felt sitting at my own scratched laminate counter scrolling through those photos was not simple happiness, and I do not like admitting what it actually was. It was envy, plain and unglamorous. Not the kind that wishes her ill, just the kind that quietly recalculates my own life against hers every time a new photo lands. I spent years of my life with nothing to compare, because addiction narrows the whole world down to one craving and there is no bandwidth left over for wanting someone else's kitchen. Getting sober gave me my life back, and apparently it gave me b...